Yang argues a theory of Asian immigration to the United States because he believes that there are more to the reasons why over 9 million Asians have immigrated here. In Yang’s perspective, there is only an underdeveloped one sided story and assumptions given, but no one has a full understanding yet. In existing theories he claims that they fail to conduct information like the multiple causes, multi level processes, initiating and sustaining forces and historical and contemporary flows.
In movies that I have watched I have found that migrating to America is the result of social or political issues. For instance, a movie that I have watched is named “Coming to America”. In this movie, it was pretty ironic that an African born prince came to America to find a wife and obviously that is not a common reason for why people would migrate, but it is a way of opportunity. The prince could not find resources in Africa to fulfill his need for a wife. In fact, some people come to America to feel “normal” by familiarizing themselves with what’s going on in the United States now and what’s popular. I have family in Jamaica that sometimes see me posting on social media and ask me what I mean by what I post. They even ask how I put on makeup the way I do as if it is an American thing to do. All of that is to say that people reason with migrating to the United States to get a feel of different cultures and diversity. In high school, I read a novel that was focused on a young girl migrating to another place and her backstory was she was poor and tried to find a way out of poverty so she decided to move to the states as a new start and a means of opportunity. These explanations compare to the theory that Yang puts forth because it shows the differences that people want to explore here in America. For example, Yang states, “A fundamental premise of this theory is that people normally do not engage in international migration if conditions or life opportunities of their home country are the same as or similar to those of another country; namely, people migrate across national borders because of differences between the homeland and a foreign land in economic, political, social, and environmental conditions or in life chances” (Yang 16). Yang’s three clusters of factors he believes we need to look at in order to have an understanding of Asian migration to America is intercountry disparities, multilevel connections, and migration policies. To add to his clusters, I would say finding the root to the issues that occur in the nation that push people into making that decision to migrate to America.
Great discussion, Alexis.